Google Is Bringing Snapchat-Like Stories to Search

As part of its Accelerated Mobile Pages project, Google is bringing a new type of content to mobile Search today. The company is introducing Snapchat-like Stories format for news within Google Search in partnership with the world’s leading media publications, including CNN, Conde Nast, The Washington Post, Vox Media, and others.

The new format, called AMP Stories, allows publications to build visual stories with rich graphics and easy-to-consume content that show up in Google Search. Like Snapchat Stories, users can view the Stories just by swiping left/right from their mobile browser without having to install any additional apps. With the launch of AMP Stories today, other publications can start integrating AMP Stories into their websites, too.

Google is kicking off AMP Stories by gradually testing it with a small group of users, and the company hopes to expand the new format to all users in the near-future after sufficient testing. Moreover, AMP Stories doesn’t support advertisements at the moment, something which shouldn’t be too difficult for Google to figure out before the public launch. The adoption of AMP Stories will, however, be a whole lot smaller than the regular AMP pages, and only major publications will be able to dedicate all the resources required to publish these visual stories in Search.